Federation (Trek) vs Systems Alliance (Mass Effect)

[Ted C]

I know that we generally regard the Federation as technologically superior to the Systems Alliance, but I'm beginning to question the normal conclusion.

The Federation has access to matter-antimatter reactors, of course, so they can generate more power, but I'm not sure that alone would win a war for them.

The Systems Alliance is dependent on Mass Relays for long-range interstellar travel, but the mass relays are very hard to damage. It can be done if you can tug a large enough asteroid onto a collision course, but I'm not sure whether the Federation could pull that off when under attack. For shorter trips, mass effect drive doesn't seem to be noticeably inferior to warp drive.

Phasers would presumably be very effective against Alliance starships, since mass effect barriers are pretty useless against energy beams. Torpedoes would presumably be less effective, since Alliance ships have point-defense lasers that are reportedly very effective against guided missiles (enough to make missiles nearly absolete in Mass Effect, except for torpedoes fired at point-blank range).

Federation shields would presumably stop slugs from mass effect cannons, but Federation shields aren't optimized for defense against metal slugs traveling upwards of 9000 km/s, so I don't know how long the shield generators could take the beating (conservation of momentum and all).

All in all, the Federation might well have the advantage in space, so I can concede the war.

On the ground, though, it looks like the Alliance would crush the Federation if air and space support were absent or contested. The Feds have unarmored troops with phasers, communicators, and maybe some tricorders. Alliance troops will have body armor, a variety of small arms, including support weapons, grenades, tanks, and specialized troops with biotic powers (usually telekinetic abilites that can exert hundreds of Newtons of force in arbitrary directions) and weaponized omni-tools. The omni-tools are especially interesting: all are miniature computer/scanner/communicator/mini-fabricator combinations, and weaponized versions can launch guided missiles, fire directed electromagnetic pulses, and create combat drones on the fly.

On the ground, at least, I think the Alliance would give much better than they got against the Federation.

[NeoGoomba]

The Alliance dreadnoughts can pump out decent Trek-level damage with their main guns (like 30KT each gun every five seconds), but as far as I know there's nothing really to go on for what their smaller mainline ships can do.

How much do ships cake on the armor plating in ME? Relatively heavy armor seems to really gimp the magic phaser NDF nonsense, so that may be a saving grace against Starfleet's beam weapons.

[Skywalker_T-65]

There isn't a whole lot to work off on ME ship-scale armor. The only real example (off the top of my head, and I haven't read the books or played ME3) is when you have to upgrade the Normandy for the Collector mission. One of the things is improved armor, and even that armor doesn't stand up well to the Reaper style energy weapons on the Oculus(sp?), though that may just be a mini-Thanix cannon.

Granted, it has been awhile since I played ME2, so it may have been the collisions weakening the armor somewhat. And IIRC, if you don't upgrade the armor, said impacts will do some decent damage. To me, it seems like ME falls into the 'rely on the shields barriers, not the armor!' trap.

Could be wrong though.

EDIT: And that's just one ship. I don't believe we ever see how the armor really stands up on Dreds and such. Since the only ship battles in ME are ones against the Reapers (or Collectors, who use downgraded Reaper tech IIRC), who are so much more powerful than Galactic Standard, that using their weaponry effectiveness is a bit of a problem

[Connor MacLeod]

Just to preempt what I suspect may be alot of argument.. .is this going to take on only a purely military dimension? I mean unless the Systems Alliance is attacking and the Federation defending, I dont see how they would get to war to begin with, and thats sort of relevant because who attacks and who defense can play a huge role in the outcome as well.

But a more political/diplomatic or even mercantile angle to the discussion might be more appropriate than a strictly 'to the death' scenario.

[NeoGoomba]

I think the genetic engineering practices of the Systems Alliance would be met with disdain by the Federation. Their whole "no genetic modification" flies in the face of the Alliance's seeming mandatory gene therapy. Not only do unborn children go through gene therapy, recruits into the military (supposedly) get even more "upgrades".

Medi-gel, however, would probably be seen to have great value, as it is some magical stopgap for injuries. Many a redshirt/goldshirt may be saved by medi-gel application.

The various industrial capabilities of the Alliance would also be valuable to the Federation, without even taking military applications into account. Alliance material fabrication, construction, and synthetics all appear to surpass what we've seen from Starfleet .

And on the other side, the Federation has anti-matter power, superior FTL communications equipment, replicator tech (possibly), force field generation, transporters, and more that the Systems Alliance would covet.

A technological hybrid of the two factions would be a very interesting beast.

[Ted C]

The Alliance dreadnoughts can pump out decent Trek-level damage with their main guns (like 30KT each gun every five seconds), but as far as I know there's nothing really to go on for what their smaller mainline ships can do.

Dreadnaught main guns are around 30KT/shot with ranges of tens of thousands of km.
Cruiser main guns will have lower firepower because the accelerator has a shorter barrel. Effective range is thousands of km; impact energy isn't specified.
Frigates engage from hundreds of km or closer, screening the larger ships. They're fast and maneuverable to close to within just a few kilometer's to launch torpedoes. The yield on torpedoes isn't specified: they use mass effect fields to rip targets apart.

How much do ships cake on the armor plating in ME? Relatively heavy armor seems to really gimp the magic phaser NDF nonsense, so that may be a saving grace against Starfleet's beam weapons.

Around ME2 to ME3, they start putting a special, super-compressed composite armor on starships that provides more resistance to energy weapons, but energy weapons still aren't a primary threat. It was good against the beams used by Reaper "Oculus" fighters, but there's no telling how well it would hold up against phasers and such.

[Ted C]

There isn't a whole lot to work off on ME ship-scale armor. The only real example (off the top of my head, and I haven't read the books or played ME3) is when you have to upgrade the Normandy for the Collector mission. One of the things is improved armor, and even that armor doesn't stand up well to the Reaper style energy weapons on the Oculus(sp?), though that may just be a mini-Thanix cannon.

The upgraded Normandy actually holds up quite well to repeated hits from Oculus beams; it's the eventual explosion of the Collector cruiser that finally forces the Normandy to crash land, requiring repairs before she can fly again.

[Ted C]

Just to preempt what I suspect may be alot of argument.. .is this going to take on only a purely military dimension? I mean unless the Systems Alliance is attacking and the Federation defending, I dont see how they would get to war to begin with, and thats sort of relevant because who attacks and who defense can play a huge role in the outcome as well.

But a more political/diplomatic or even mercantile angle to the discussion might be more appropriate than a strictly 'to the death' scenario.

Militarily speaking, we'll have to assume that the Federation has some cause to be on the offensive against the Systems Alliance, as the Alliance has no way to carry a fight into the Federation's version of the Milky Way. That, or put convenient wormholes near the edges of systems where the territories of the two overlap, or something.

Due to the differences in how they get around the galaxy, the strategic aspect of a war is hard to evaluate, but how a battle would go if joined is probably easier to determine.

[NeoGoomba]

I can't access any of the ME sites from work, but do we know how many guns the Everest-class dreadnought has? Because if they can mount more than a few of them, I could see them battering down the shields of a few Starfleet ships at a fair distance away.

Also, I believe the ME 3 codex states just how many dreadnoughts the Alliance has (since it is limited by that treaty with the Turians), which can help us start to determine fleet numbers, as primary Alliance battlegroups are built around dreadnoughts.

[Ted C]

I can't access any of the ME sites from work, but do we know how many guns the Everest-class dreadnought has? Because if they can mount more than a few of them, I could see them battering down the shields of a few Starfleet ships at a fair distance away.

A big cap-ship has one "spinal mount" and a lot of smaller broadside guns.

Also, I believe the ME 3 codex states just how many dreadnoughts the Alliance has (since it is limited by that treaty with the Turians), which can help us start to determine fleet numbers, as primary Alliance battlegroups are built around dreadnoughts.

Dreadnaughts, specifically, are limited by treaty. I believe the turian fleet has 39 dreadnaughts, and no other race is allowed to have as many (although asari dreadnaughts are bigger and more powerful than turian dreadnaughts). So the Alliance fleet will only have a few dozen dreadnaughts, but the numbers of cruisers and other smaller vessels isn't specified. The Alliance also builds carriers, since there are no rules in the council treaty about them; they lack the spinal-mount mass accelerator, though.

[ladiesman]

This is something of a Vlad Tepes award here. What did Mass Effect do to you?

Dreadnaughts MIGHT be able to dish out around Trek levels of firepower, but all of ME doesn't have many.....The Alliance has very few (if any?)

The Federation will win on numbers alone.

And yes, the Federation could destroy a Mass Relay. They very durable, but not indestructible.

[bilateralrope]

Would the Federation be willing to destroy the Mass Relays given how many civilian casualties that would cause ?

Even if we ignore the civilian casualties, the Relays would benefit the Federation if they figured out how to activate them. Which shouldn't be too hard when the Reapers plan relied on new civilizations being able to turn them on.

[Rossum]

I'm pretty sure there are some Relays in uninhabited or near-uninhabited systems. If they really needed to (like say, during the Reaper invasion) they could destroy relays in uninhabited systems to deny their enemy easy access through those parts of space.

Or would that even work? Do Mass Relays need to have one on both ends to perform the jump?

Also, assuming the other Mass Effect races haven't vanished from the universe, would the Federation blowing up a Mass Relay result in the ME races declaring war on them?

[Skywalker_T-65]

There isn't a whole lot to work off on ME ship-scale armor. The only real example (off the top of my head, and I haven't read the books or played ME3) is when you have to upgrade the Normandy for the Collector mission. One of the things is improved armor, and even that armor doesn't stand up well to the Reaper style energy weapons on the Oculus(sp?), though that may just be a mini-Thanix cannon.

The upgraded Normandy actually holds up quite well to repeated hits from Oculus beams; it's the eventual explosion of the Collector cruiser that finally forces the Normandy to crash land, requiring repairs before she can fly again.

Oh I know that much. Just (from what I remember) the Oculus beams manage to carve decent holes in the armor, including burrowing into (and out of) the 'cargo hold/hanger'. Its been a long time though, so I may be remembering them doing more than they did.

*shrug*

[Ted C]

I'm pretty sure there are some Relays in uninhabited or near-uninhabited systems. If they really needed to (like say, during the Reaper invasion) they could destroy relays in uninhabited systems to deny their enemy easy access through those parts of space.

Or would that even work? Do Mass Relays need to have one on both ends to perform the jump?

Yes. One accelerates your ship to ludicrous speed, and another is needed to "catch" your ship at the destination.

Also, assuming the other Mass Effect races haven't vanished from the universe, would the Federation blowing up a Mass Relay result in the ME races declaring war on them?

Probably, but I didn't want to make this a "Federation vs All of Mass Effect" contest.

[ladiesman]

Would the Federation be willing to destroy the Mass Relays given how many civilian casualties that would cause ?

Even if we ignore the civilian casualties, the Relays would benefit the Federation if they figured out how to activate them. Which shouldn't be too hard when the Reapers plan relied on new civilizations being able to turn them on.

No they wouldn't. But we can't disregard the difficult to quantify scientific capabilities of the Federation. They may not NEED to destroy the relays. As dumb as it sounds, reversing the polarity of a subnucleonic field to generate a cascading polaron bubble from the main deflector could disrupt the relay. Treknobabble is always a potential wildcard.

[Connor MacLeod]

Militarily speaking, we'll have to assume that the Federation has some cause to be on the offensive against the Systems Alliance, as the Alliance has no way to carry a fight into the Federation's version of the Milky Way. That, or put convenient wormholes near the edges of systems where the territories of the two overlap, or something.

That depends on how the assumptions played out. Admittedly I haven't done massive trek calcs in a long time, but there's reason to believe they're not significantly more capable of launching long-range strikes via FTL than the sYstems alliance (comes down to numbers, like with most things.) so how far away the FEderation and Systems alliance is will do much to dictate this.

It will also depend on how big you figure the Feddie fleet is. Its ranged from few thousand (or less) to tens of thousands depending on who you ask, and I think the Systems Alliance was only in the hundreds. That could also lead to a resource/industrial and territorial advantage for the Federation.

Due to the differences in how they get around the galaxy, the strategic aspect of a war is hard to evaluate, but how a battle would go if joined is probably easier to determine.

Its hard to evaluate but it has a huge impact on it, as does the politics. Like it or not, the Federation is not an aggressively militant faction by itself. You'd have to assume something like 'Section 31 machinations' leading to a conflict or something (maybe they're intending to make the Federation more militant by contriving a war between the two, having the federation absorb/conquer the Systems alliance, and adapt/learn from that military tech.)

Otherwise it might end up being some sort of "In the Beginning' style misunderstanding, with one side (probably the Systems alliance) firing on the Federation. But even then I'm fairly certain that unless the SA decides to fight ot the death, they're going to seek some way of finding a diplomatic solution rather than crush them militarily.


I suppose I can go back and throw in a few other comments:

I know that we generally regard the Federation as technologically superior to the Systems Alliance, but I'm beginning to question the normal conclusion.

'more advanced' does not neccesarily mean better. It depends on the technologies and the capabilities that derive from them. Having a generally superior tech base doesn't matter much if your performance is inferior to the 'less advanced' faction. Brute force is its own equalizer.

The Federation has access to matter-antimatter reactors, of course, so they can generate more power, but I'm not sure that alone would win a war for them.

Depends on how its used and how much production they go with. I mean if you really want to be ruthless, making FTL doom missiles with large quantities of antimatter (think Dreadnought) would be quite a hard tactic for the SA to counter, although I doubt the FEderation would be willing to do that from the start either.

The Systems Alliance is dependent on Mass Relays for long-range interstellar travel, but the mass relays are very hard to damage. It can be done if you can tug a large enough asteroid onto a collision course, but I'm not sure whether the Federation could pull that off when under attack. For shorter trips, mass effect drive doesn't seem to be noticeably inferior to warp drive.

This makes it rather hard (As I mentioend) for both sides to be launching attacks on one another unless they're relatively close by, or both have acess to mass relays. Although in the case of the latter, it becomes somewhat attritional or a stalemate since that choke point is the vital corridor to attacking the other side.

Phasers would presumably be very effective against Alliance starships, since mass effect barriers are pretty useless against energy beams. Torpedoes would presumably be less effective, since Alliance ships have point-defense lasers that are reportedly very effective against guided missiles (enough to make missiles nearly absolete in Mass Effect, except for torpedoes fired at point-blank range).

This is going to depend entirely on the numbers and performance we are assuming for Federation vessels. Its not exactly like FEderation numbers are set in stone. Moreover, whilst Gardian is effective point defenes against stuff in the ME universe, I wouldn't assume it translates into a perfect defense against other factions. Gardian IIRC has only a relatively short range, for example.

Federation shields would presumably stop slugs from mass effect cannons, but Federation shields aren't optimized for defense against metal slugs traveling upwards of 9000 km/s, so I don't know how long the shield generators could take the beating (conservation of momentum and all).

Depends on how Federation shields work against projectiles I suppose. I mean if they're a solid barrier its quite possible ME projectiles (depending on composition) would just vaporize on impact (hypervelocity and all that.), but even then its possible that the force/momentum of the impact could batter the shield generators or their mountings. The shields could never be breached once (to continue the example) and yet fail because of punishment by that interpretation. And depending on how their propulsion works (EG the mass lightning or lack thereof) its quite possible kinetic impactors might result in something out of lensman's inertialess drives.

On the ground, though, it looks like the Alliance would crush the Federation if air and space support were absent or contested. The Feds have unarmored troops with phasers, communicators, and maybe some tricorders. Alliance troops will have body armor, a variety of small arms, including support weapons, grenades, tanks, and specialized troops with biotic powers (usually telekinetic abilites that can exert hundreds of Newtons of force in arbitrary directions) and weaponized omni-tools. The omni-tools are especially interesting: all are miniature computer/scanner/communicator/mini-fabricator combinations, and weaponized versions can launch guided missiles, fire directed electromagnetic pulses, and create combat drones on the fly.

On the ground, at least, I think the Alliance would give much better than they got against the Federation.

I suppose this depends on all the assumptions you figure on. It could be possible the Federation could match them on the ground depending on what technologies they pull out (we've heard of personal forcefields for example) but there's alot of assumptions tied up in that. BEsides the Federation isn't really optimized for 'ground warfare' from the outset so even if Mass effect kicks their butt its hardly a shock this might happen. Its like putting a 10 year old against a champion boxer and then be shocked and critical when the kid fails to measure up.

[gigabytelord]

Concerning FTL I would lile to clarify something.

We all know that the ME verse uses mass effect gates to throw ships around the galaxy, we don't know exactly how fast this process is of course, but if we just took the game cinematics at face value (which I'm assuming that we aren't) then that would mean that ME ships can cross the entire damn thing in as little as a few minutes.

spoiler tag for those may not have played me3 yet. Spoiler

But is everyone aware that they do in fact have a second reliable, albeit fuel intensive, form of FTL?
I'm sure everyone has realized this, but after the massive freak out where thousands of people got pissed at Bioware for apparently trapping thousands of ships in the sol-system because they (the players) just assumed that there where no other forms of FTL besides the gates, even though the game is full of instances where this is proved to not be the case, I just want to make sure that no one here thinks the same.

IIRC it is shown several times that there is generally only one gate per "sector" of space, a better way of saying it might be that there is only one gate for every half a dozen systems, and besides game play, which of course is simplified for the players sake, do we have any idea just how fast non-gate FTL is between these systems?

As it is implied that even without the gates at the end of ME3, regardless of the ending you choose, that getting the fleets back home and effecting repairs on the gate is possible.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, IIRC...the non-Relay FTL is somewhere around 12 light years per...something. Day I think. I'd have to check the wiki to be sure. I'll do that real quick and edit the findings in.

EDIT: Yep, my Codex-fu is strong evidently: FTL

And the specific part:

With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise without bending space-time and causing time dilation.

Emphasis mine. So, to more knowledgeable Trek fans...how does that compare to Warp?

[Ted C]

Well, IIRC...the non-Relay FTL is somewhere around 12 light years per...something. Day I think. I'd have to check the wiki to be sure. I'll do that real quick and edit the findings in.

EDIT: Yep, my Codex-fu is strong evidently: FTL

And the specific part:

With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise without bending space-time and causing time dilation.

Emphasis mine. So, to more knowledgeable Trek fans...how does that compare to Warp?

That puts mass effect FTL (without using relays) at over 4000c, which is definitely competitive with warp drive: somewhere between warp 7 and warp 8, by my estimates.

[NeoGoomba]

That certainly gives the Alliance near parity with Starfleet, speed-wise. However we don't know how long Alliance ships can sustain such speeds since, as mentioned before, their FTL is a fuel guzzler.

I think that, in a purely military engagement, the effect of mass effect torpedoes upon Federation shields will be the big decider. Since they are launched from fighters, and the Alliance can and does field an ungodly number of them (the Normandy alone could have funded 12,000 fighters, which that one admiral in ME1 wanted instead), torpedo swarms against Starfleet may be the Alliance's preferred method of attack over cap-ship slugfests.

Also, the extensive use of ECW/ECCW by the Alliance during combat may be a powerful tool as well, with their VI networks constantly trying to breach Starfleet command and control systems.

[Ted C]

Also, the extensive use of ECW/ECCW by the Alliance during combat may be a powerful tool as well, with their VI networks constantly trying to breach Starfleet command and control systems.

I didn't even think of that. Not really a factor in this contest, but can you imagine what EDI could do to a Federation starship, given the low quality of their network security?

[Lord Revan]

Also, the extensive use of ECW/ECCW by the Alliance during combat may be a powerful tool as well, with their VI networks constantly trying to breach Starfleet command and control systems.

I didn't even think of that. Not really a factor in this contest, but can you imagine what EDI could do to a Federation starship, given the low quality of their network security?

granted we should assume that the sides don't use the same OS, so it might take a while for the Systems Alliance to make software that can interact with SF software.

[NeoGoomba]

I didn't even think of that. Not really a factor in this contest, but can you imagine what EDI could do to a Federation starship, given the low quality of their network security?

Sadly I think just the vanilla combat VI's would be a threat to Starfleet networks, at least initially. The "hey look at that foreign .exe file! Imma gonna run it!" mindset of Starfleet computers is not going to help them. The iconian virus being a prime example.

Edit - hah, I meant ECM/ECCM of course. But it would be awesome watching the Alliance send Rob Van Damme and Mic Foley onto a Starfleet ship to cause havoc.

[Ted C]

Also, the extensive use of ECW/ECCW by the Alliance during combat may be a powerful tool as well, with their VI networks constantly trying to breach Starfleet command and control systems.

I didn't even think of that. Not really a factor in this contest, but can you imagine what EDI could do to a Federation starship, given the low quality of their network security?

granted we should assume that the sides don't use the same OS, so it might take a while for the Systems Alliance to make software that can interact with SF software.

Combat VI's are designed to attack unfamiliar operating systems. The geth are the best at this sort of thing, but everybody has combat software intended to invade foreign hardware and OSs.